Long-Term Road Test
It usually takes us 10 to 12 months to put 40,000 miles on cars in our long-term test fleet. But after 15 months, our Suzuki Forenza wagon was still 6000 miles short of that goal. Egads! Suzuki wanted its car back! Indeed, the company's minions had called a few times to inquire if it was still in our possession, so we stuffed long-suffering road warrior Jared Gall (this would be his third long-distance trek in the Forenza) and his buddy Dan Klos into the wagon for a 13-day odyssey to rack up mileage sufficient to complete our test.
So there they were, late on a Saturday night on a desolate stretch of Highway 14 in loneliest northern Wyoming, with Dan at the wheel, cresting a small rise, when the Forenza center-punched a terrier-sized porcupine. The impact was explosively loud and startling. Jared and Dan made a U-turn but were unable to offer mouth-to-mouth to their spiny victim, who was, sad to say, beyond mortal help. They did notice its quills had pierced the radiator and the Forenza was bleeding coolant.
The closest town, Greybull, was 30 miles away, so our two fine examples of American youth poured a half-liter of vintage Evian into the radiator and decided to try to limp into town. They made it 20 miles before the rising engine temperature forced them to stop. They had no sooner turned on the hazard flashers when the first car they had seen in miles pulled over to help. The occupants were locals, and they generously offered a gallon of coolant. They were also very interested in the whereabouts of the recently deceased porcupine. Jared and Dan pointed them 20 miles back up the road and were a little disappointed that they weren't invited to share in the road-kill barbecue.
Our guys made it to Greybull, but of course all the local garages and auto-parts stores were closed. Dan suggested they try asking about the NAPA auto-supply store's hours at the Smokehouse saloon. Sure enough, within 20 seconds of walking in, a young lady surmised, "Hey, you're not local!" and soon after had our pair of adventurers making friends with four middle-aged fellows who let them know that a bottle of Bar's Leaks Stop Leak would do the trick and could be acquired at the NAPA store the following morning. The locals (jokingly) threatened to string Dan up from the only stoplight in town for killing the state animal, which is in fact the bison. The next morning, the suggested remedy cured the Forenza's bleeding and our unlucky pair soldiered on another 5300 miles to finish the test.
The porcupine saga turned out to be the most exciting thing that happened with our Forenza over the course of its stay. Our Absolute White (read "appliance white") Forenza ended up being a reliable if pretty much uninteresting tool to get us from point A to point B. There's certainly no complaint about the price of our little wagon, which was a top-of-the-line EX model. It included fog lights, 15-inch alloy wheels, remote keyless entry, power sunroof, leather seats, leather-wrapped steering wheel and shift knob, and cruise control. Equipped with the only available option, ABS with electronic brake distribution, the Forenza totaled $18,494. A less-fancy base Forenza wagon can be had for $15,039.
To its everlasting credit, the Forenza never broke down, never stranded us, never needed any unscheduled dealer visits for repairs. It did need maintenance every 7500 miles, according to Suzuki's schedule. Most of the service stops were simple oil and oil-filter changes with a tire rotation. The 30,000-mile service was a little more involved, requiring replacement of coolant, air filter, and spark plugs. The price of these services varied all over the map. The first service cost $73 but included $24 to dump what we think are unnecessary additives into the engine and fuel tank, so we subtracted $24 from that stop. The next supposedly identical service at 15,000 miles ran us $193. Turns out the dealer charged us for some uncalled-for fuel-injector cleaning, differential service, and throttle-body maintenance. We also subtracted that superfluous amount from the service total. The 22,500-mile service set us back $35. At 30,000 miles the local Suzuki dealer failed to do the more extensive service properly; the mechanics simply changed the oil and oil filter and charged us $20 but didn't send us the paperwork for three months. By the time we found out about the error, the Forenza needed its 37,500-mile service, so we decided to try another dealer for a proper 30K service. That stop cost us $255. All told, we spent $501 on scheduled service for the Forenza. That's $54 more than we spent on our long-term 2000 Ford Focus SE wagon.
